Originally posted by inimalistit looks liek they have alternative pathways for biosynthesis using either phosphorus or arsenic, depending on conditions. It's safe to assume the baseline pathway was phosphorus based. LUCA remains solid, a linegae of cells that evolved separately from inorganic compounds would likely have a lot more differences from known life forms.
yes, something of onewhat I want to know is if this simply is an adaptation by some extremophile bacteria, or whether we will find an anscestorial history of arsenic DNA based organisms, which have the same roots as phosphorus based life forms...
the NASA article seems to imply the former, but man, thinking that life could have had a number of different compositions, depending on the environment it came from, so cool. Very relevant for what me and Ush were discussing
Originally posted by 753
it looks liek they have alternative pathways for biosynthesis using either phosphorus or arsenic, depending on conditions. It's safe to assume the baseline pathway was phosphorus based. LUCA remains solid, a linegae of cells that evolved separately from inorganic compounds would likely have a lot more differences from known life forms.
thanks 🙂
they say the lake they found these bacteria in has the properties it does because of 50 years of being cut off from other water sources. Is it possible that this trait could have evolved in that time (ie: this is an isolated mutation) or is it more likely that a bacteria with a primitive form of "arsnic DNA" found itself there? i hope that makes sense....
It does amke sense, it's actually a type of question that typically causes controversy. Could be either really.
A lot of evolution biologists throw adaptive explanations at anything they encounter, specially the selfish gene crowd, so they'd jump to the conclusion that it's an adaptation selected after the lake became isolated and therefore more saline, but I'm more in the mayr/gould/futuyma side of the fence.
Originally posted by 753
BullseyeIt probably got fixated in the populatuion through genetic drift and then manifested when the arseny went up.
huh, maybe some type of mechanism to become less selective in the "parts" the cell uses when there is a lack of phospherus in the environment, mixed with the coincidence of an abundance of arsenic?
I guess that is wildly speculative....
Originally posted by Omega Vision
I'd like to see some names. I've never heard any credible scientist forward that theory.Even theories of collective intelligence tend to be dismissed.
Well theres this.
http://www.vkm.no/dav/413af9502e.pdf
They seem to define sentience as having a sensation of pain (and other sense of sensation but they put on emphasis on pain). So sentience in science isn't what I think its is. For me sentience is being self aware and aware of others eg I think an ant would have some form of self awarness and understands that it has a function to fulfil.
However not sure if that changes anything. Insects are a lifeform that has limited sense of perception, therefore it can be argued that we may have a limited sense of perception and cannot percieve other lifeforms.
Originally posted by Deadline
For me sentience is being self aware and aware of others eg I think an ant would have some form of self awarness and understands that it has a function to fulfil.
in any animal that doesn't use language to communicate (re: anything that isn't human) this is exceptionally hard to show
for instance, even for mammals like cats and dogs, that logic would assume have these types of qualities, it is almost impossible to prove.
How would you ever design an experiment in which you can show a dog knows it is a dog? Or knows that a reflection of itself is itself. We have trouble showing this in great apes.
Originally posted by Deadline
However not sure if that changes anything. Insects are a lifeform that has limited sense of perception, therefore it can be argued that we may have a limited sense of perception and cannot percieve other lifeforms.
yes, but we can build machines to percieve things that we can't. A lifeform would not only have to entirely exist and only interact with things we can't see, but with things we don't even know exist.
also, ants can percieve humans
Well, even insects and plants are functionally capable of differentiating their own bodies from their environment, which displays perception of self and other (in the sense of interpreting sense data) but as far as self awareness as a mental representation of one's self goes, it is truly difficult to prove that most vertebrates possess them.
New terms may be necessary for clearer separation of the concepts to avoid confusion too.
my thoughts are that the whole idea of sentience is anthrocentric.
I agree, there is a difference between knowing you are not the same as your environment and being able to vividly conceptualize yourself as an individual, but ultimately, I think we bias the perspective of an organism with the same brain as we have when trying to decide what is sentient. It could almost be the same as asking, "What animals have human-like perception"
Originally posted by inimalist
yes, but we can build machines to percieve things that we can't. A lifeform would not only have to entirely exist and only interact with things we can't see, but with things we don't even know exist.
Heck we can design experiment that prove there are things the universe doesn't know exist, re: vacuum energy/virtual particles. Escaping human perception is pretty much impossible if we know you exist and basically where you are.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Heck we can design experiment that prove there are things the universe doesn't know exist, re: vacuum energy/virtual particles. Escaping human perception is pretty much impossible if we know you exist and basically where you are.
What is dark matter? There is a lot we don't know.
Originally posted by inimalistyes, the criteria how humanlike other lifeforms are
my thoughts are that the whole idea of sentience is anthrocentric.I agree, there is a difference between knowing you are not the same as your environment and being able to vividly conceptualize yourself as an individual, but ultimately, I think we bias the perspective of an organism with the same brain as we have when trying to decide what is sentient. It could almost be the same as asking, "What animals have human-like perception"